


A Symphony

by seasalticecream32



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5105387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasalticecream32/pseuds/seasalticecream32
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Arthur's not a zombie, not really a ghost, but he haunts Merlin all the same, whispering dark deeds and dark thoughts in his ear. (A bit changed up, sorry.)</p><p>Merlin has never lost to a Soul before, but Arthur has a simple request. He wants to be a Death like Merlin. His motivations are unclear at first, but as they draw closer and closer to Arthur's secrets, Merlin becomes certain that there's more to Arthur's request than at first it appears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Symphony

Merlin had enough problems. He didn’t worry about right and wrong anymore. Those were abstract concepts in a concrete world and he’d learned to stop living in the make believe.

Merlin carried knives and knew how to use them. His eyes lit dark corners and his alabaster skin caught moonlight and he was a vision in the night. Merlin knew enough about destiny to know that it always ended the same way. Everyone dies.

So he took on that cloak, all shifting tones of gray, and he wrestled mortality on his immortal shoulders. Merlin should have known. Sometimes, Death loses.

***

Merlin grunted under the heavy weight of golden skin and thick muscle. Blond hair flashed in his peripheral, broad shoulders ramming into his gut. Stars flashed behind his eyes when his head knocked against stone. Merlin couldn’t get his hands under the man to get him away. Knives only worked on the living, so magic it would have to be.

Even when gold held the man up by his wrists and pinned him back, Merlin found himself struggling to subdue the stranger.

And then he wasn’t.

There was a yell, the snap of his magic recoiling on him, and the flash of a sword, and then Merlin’s world went black.

***

Merlin had heard of Deaths taken hostage by Souls before, but he’d never thought it would happen to him.

He was Merlin, after all. He was the Death of Deaths. When Merlin came after a soul, it died. He’d taken down kings and politicians, demons and dealers. He’d zipped across time, across famine and war and all the ends. He was morbidly proud of his track record.

He’d never lost before.

This Soul grinned at him like it would chew him up and spit him out boneless.

Merlin wasn’t sure what to make of that.

***

“It was a lucky shot, is all.” Merlin flicked fuzz from his cloak. His captor was incredibly boring.

“Right. I trained in combat all my life, but I’m sure it was just luck.” The Soul chuckled darkly.

“I could get myself out of these ropes any time. The knots are ghastly.” Merlin shook his fists as if to prove his point, but dropped his hands back to his lap. “Besides, I’m magic.”

“You can stop whining, Merlin. I’m not going to keep you forever. I just have one request.”

“What?”

“Make me a Death.”

***

Merlin wasn’t sure he’d heard him right at first.

But he definitely heard him right the next ten times he asked.

“I already told you, Soul. You do not _become_ a Death. You can’t be dead and be Death. That’s not how it works.”

“Why not?” The man tugged on the rope and pulled Merlin along and Merlin glared at the thin twine and wondered why on earth he couldn’t escape.

“Because you’re dead. You’re a Soul. You have to move on.” Merlin shifted his glare to the blond head in front of him.

“I’m not a Soul, I’m Arthur.”  
“Ok, well, _Arthur_ , you have to be immortal to be a Death.”

“I seem to be unable to die twice, wouldn’t you say, Merlin?”

***

He was getting the worse kind of ick for this Soul. This Arthur.

The man just wouldn’t shut up. He kept on about his duty and his destiny and how his work wasn’t finished. He argued that being a Death would solve all his problems: an endless amount of time to work on his destiny.

Except, and Merlin kept reminding Arthur of this, Deaths didn’t have free time to pursue other interests.

As a matter of fact, it was amazing the world was turning with Merlin out of commission. Merlin had never lost to a Soul before. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people all across the world were living past their deaths. They probably thought it was a miracle. That always made Souls impossible to deal with.

“So how did you become a Death, Merlin?” Arthur laughed and threw his head back. Souls weren’t supposed to be so happy. “If you can do it, I can’t imagine it’s too hard. You’ve done nothing but whine since I caught you.”

“I’m not whining! You’re going to upset the balance! Souls everywhere are not receiving their death!” Merlin jerked his hands against the rope again and yet still nothing happened. “What on earth is this infernal string?”

“Well, that’s woven from my life, supposedly. An old friend a long time ago made it for me.”

Merlin only stared in shock at the twine, noting for the first time that it shone in the sunlight, dull and gold.

***

“How did you die again?” Merlin felt the clack of his knives against his thigh and wondered if he’d be able to twist to grab them.

“Stabbed by a friend.” Arthur waved him off and kept walking, but Merlin figured out he wasn’t really heading anywhere

“Doesn’t sound like much of a friend,” he said. He twisted to the right and bent awkwardly.

“It happens. Happened more than once while I was alive actually. You’d be surprised what having a destiny like mine will bring into a life.”

Merlin only gave him a level stare before continuing to reach for his knives.

“If you’re going to cut my life line, I think you should know that I’ve already tried that. That string is unbreakable.” Arthur had stopped pretending to walk anywhere. He’d settled on sitting on springy earth, stretching out languidly. “You might as well give up now and make me a Death.”

“I can’t make you a Death. I can’t make anyone a Death.” Merlin ground his teeth. “How do you know it won’t break? How did you even get this?”

“My mom made it.” Arthur twirled grass between his thumb and forefinger. “She had a sorceress make it. Nimueh.”

Merlin cursed. Of course. Nimueh had been causing problems for him since she was born. “Sounds like a real Harry Potter story.”

“A what?” Arthur grinned when Merlin shook his head. “Must be some secret Death stuff.”

“No, it’s immortal stuff.” Merlin tried to sound aggravated, but when he looked up Arthur was already shaking his head and laying down to sleep.

Merlin didn’t actually feel very angry.

***

“Arthur?” Arthur hadn’t stirred when Merlin had pushed at his boots. He hadn’t even stirred when Merlin had yanked on the rope that connected them, jerking Arthur forward. “Arthur?”

He’d never had a Soul move on without him before. It was a bit awkward. “Oi, prat, I’m supposed to do the Death, not you.”

“Thought you said you couldn’t make a Soul a Death?” Arthur grinned sleepily, but when he sat up Merlin flinched.

Arthur was fading.

***

“There has to be some way to become a Death.” Arthur kept moving, and Merlin was starting to recognize the circle, even if he didn’t know what it was circling.

“If there is, I don’t know it.” He looked through Arthur’s back into the dark green forest beyond. What would happen if Arthur wouldn’t let him take him? What about the string of Arthur’s life? “What are you expecting, Arthur?”

“I ran out of time. I have to make it right.”

“Maybe you can tell me and I can do it.”

“You said Deaths didn’t have free time.”

*******

Merlin was getting frustrated. As far as he could see, the place Arthur was circling, in an ever smaller circle, was just a broken down little shack. It was dark, darker than usual, but Merlin couldn’t feel anything particularly bothersome about it.

“Why don’t you just walk directly up to it?” Merlin asked, tugging the string of life.

“You know, whenever you do that, it kind of hurts.” Arthur rubbed his chest, wincing. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

Merlin rolled his eyes, and looked down at the golden string. “You know, I’m not completely evil. Deaths aren’t all bad.”

“Prove it, make me a Death.” Arthur gave Merlin a sidelong look, and shook his head when Merlin looked away. “Look, it can even be temporary. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“What is it? Just tell me what it is.” Merlin paused, refusing to move his feet even as Arthur pulled him along.

Arthur’s shoulders were drooping, bags under his eyes. He didn’t look like he could wrestle Merlin and win now. Being not-dead and not-alive was wearing on him, and Merlin wasn’t sure what happened if a Soul moved on without a Death. Where did they go? How did they find their way?

Merlin had a sinking feeling that Souls that weren’t led by a Death just wandered, forever.

“What’s in the center of this circle, Arthur? Why not just walk in head on?”

“I have to fix it, Merlin, or everything’s ruined. I had a destiny, and if I can’t complete my destiny, it’s the end of everything.”

“Look, maybe you can complete it when you come back. All Souls come back eventually. I can work out a deal, you can be one of those guys who remembers their past life and work on it then.”

“No. I have to do it now.” Arthur walked wearily on, and Merlin’s frown deepened.

That night, Arthur didn’t stop to rest. They walked in the forest under a canopy that blocked out the stars and the moon. Merlin listened to the owls and the rustle of leaves and he watched Arthur disappearing in the dark.

***

Eventually, even Arthur couldn’t keep up the circle. In a strange way, Merlin was excited. He wanted to know what was in this shack, this leaning, drooping stack of boards that vaguely resembled a home. Merlin couldn’t imagine anyone had lived there.

Arthur had been a king. That he was bothered with this pile of sticks at all was a mystery.

Arthur paused in front of the door way, hands gripped nervously to where his sword lay unused in its scabbard. He was pale and shaking and when his head whipped around, he wasn’t looking at Merlin.

“When I came here, last time, it was already done. Boys and girls, but wrong… all around. Like they were protecting her but they couldn’t be.”

“Arthur, you’re not making any sense.” Merlin moved closer, felt the string going lax between them. He reached out, awkwardly trying to comfort Arthur with a hand on his shoulder.

The attempt was a mistake. Arthur jumped, drawing his sword, wide eyes turned on Merlin. Merlin found himself swallowing hard, the blade pressed against his neck.

“What happened?” Merlin spoke slow, carefully backing away from the sword’s edge.

Arthur’s face scrunched, his gaze far away. The switch from Arthur’s troubled but humorous persona into this was unsettling, to say the least. Merlin tried to catch Arthur’s eye, but even looking straight at him, Arthur wasn’t seeing him.

“Arthur, come on. It’s time for you to move on. Whatever this is, it’s not good. It’s already past, you can’t change things. Especially not as a—” A sound, like a bell chime or a drumbeat, cut him off, and Arthur shoved him back. As if a Soul could protect a Death.

He had dealt with Souls before, and often those Souls weren’t kind. He’d dealt with Souls that had failed to be taken by other Deaths, who were half mad with being in the inbetween. Arthur wasn’t like those souls. He’d been whole and fine and stubborn before they’d come to this door.

“Be quiet. It almost killed me the first time. I’m not sure what it can do.”

Merlin started to argue, but then he saw what had Arthur in a frenzy. His foot had cross closer to the shack, crossing a line with a zing of magic up his heel.

_“Merlin, thank you.”_

_“I've seen enough in you to know that you will make me proud.”_

_“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”_

_“The story we have been a part of will live long in the minds of men.”_

_A darkness and a longing and the ache of failure, thousands of years of failure compounding on itself over and over and over, failure a thousand different ways… All on Merlin’s shoulders, crushing him and accusing him and reminding him that it was all, always, his fault._

He didn’t have the thought to save himself, to step out of the magic line. It was Arthur that pulled him forward with a hiss of pain and a gasp as the string of life pulled taut. Arthur let go the second Merlin was free, gasping for breath and clawing at the restraints on his wrists.

“My sister.” Arthur’s lips were white. “She’s in there. Or she was. I don’t know what happened, I don’t remember.”

“You should have warned me what was going to happen.” Merlin managed to gasp out.

“Did you see them? The kids? They were so angry, and reaching and—”

“It’s just an illusion, Arthur. Just a trick of the magic. I didn’t see the same thing you saw.” Merlin took a steadying breath. Merlin closed his eyes and tried to stop the voices from echoing in his head.

Arthur shuffled, sword still gripped tightly in his hand. “We’ve got to get inside.”

“Is she still even in there? Whoever did this went through a lot of effort.” Merlin tried to shove back memories of a life gone past, of dark curls and green eyes and a wicked grin. Time never repeated itself the same way and things were always different. He hadn’t even existed in this one.

“Let’s go.” Arthur grabbed Merlin and there was an explosion of screaming accusations in his head as he was dragged through the collapsing doorway. It hurt, pain pulsing across his skin, his entire body fighting to go back, to leave this place alone.

He was a Death, he couldn’t imagine how this was affecting Arthur, how Arthur could handle to fight his way across the barrier.

When Merlin opened his eyes again, fighting down the urge to puke and more than a little angry at having literally been dragged into this mess, he saw sweat glistening on Arthur’s forehead.

“Well, we’re in here.” Arthur’s voice was weak and quiet, his hand back to gripping his sword. Merlin wondered if that instinct to attack had led to Arthur becoming a Soul.

There was a noise from a corner, and Merlin took in his surroundings for the first time.

Everything was stained red, dimly lit by a fire that burned down to glowing coals. At first, all Merlin could see in the corner was a blackness, darker and deeper than the shadows of the rest of the room. But he could hear, like a spirit howling, the tear in the world.

Something was here that shouldn’t be.

Flies buzzed too loudly in his ears, competing against the wailing from the black corner. He stepped forward, felt the string tug him weakly back. He gave one last glance to Arthur, who was disappearing quickly, his skin fading out to whites and blues, his mouth twisted up in agony, his hands clenching his sword. The string of life, golden and glowing and pulsing stronger than ever, tightened on Merlin’s wrists.

“Just make me a Death, Merlin. I have to fix it. I have to save her.” Arthur’s voice was near hysteria, cracking as if it wasn’t used to fear. Merlin thought wryly that it probably wasn’t. “I can do it, if I just have forever, I can figure it out. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Those words cut through Merlin’s heart, through his reservations and considerations. In Merlin’s life there was one thing he had learned. It did have to be this way. No amount of forever could atone for even the simplest mistakes.

Merlin pushed against the darkness shielding whatever secret it held. The black dissipated like smoke at the touch of his magic. It spilled away screeching against the shack, screaming out curses and battering against the walls. The string of life was cutting into his wrists, and he was sure that any second it would draw blood.

It couldn’t distract him from the grisly scene in front of him.

Two corpses, rotted and stinking and twisted, locked mid-battle and held by a knot of magic that Merlin couldn’t find the beginnings of to untie. It sounded like laughter and screams and anger, a curse and a fight that had never ended. Would never end. Blood dried to the end of a sword, sticking through the back of a small chest dressed in hanging velvet.

Morgana had died dressed like a queen, at the least.

“She said I wasn’t fit to be king. She attacked first, I think. I don’t remember.” Arthur fell to his knees, seeing something more than what Merlin saw in the crumbling corner of the shack. “I never meant to hurt her, but she was so angry and so loud and she wouldn’t stop. I was just like Uther, all the blood…”

Merlin felt the cut of the string into his skin, saw the drip of blood down the line. Arthur was fading, his body shimmering in and out of sight.

“Arthur, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to move on. You can’t change this.” Merlin gestured to the bones and flesh and blood still standing. “You can’t fix it anymore. I know it’s hard. You’ve got to move on.”

“You don’t understand, I can’t. I’ve got to fix it, I’ve got to save her.” Arthur was mumbling, the line more red than gold now. Merlin stepped forward, glancing over his shoulder. The scene was gruesome. The more he looked the more blood and carnage and dark magic he saw, tying up the place in ways he’d never encountered before. He reached for Arthur.

Arthur jerked away one last time, shaking his head, his mouth silently pleading to make him a Death.

Merlin touched Arthur’s arm, whispered a spell he hadn’t used in a hundred years to send Arthur directly on to his rest. Arthur disappeared with a stricken yelp and a pop of magic. The string of life on his arm, already shortened and thinned and stained, broke.

Merlin took another look around the shack and shook his head. This place was wrapped up in so much anger and guilt that no human would probably come here for a millennia.

He walked towards the door, making a mental note to warn other Deaths of this place when he heard a laugh.

There was the beat of a drum, and the wash of magic over Merlin.

_“No mortal blade can kill me.”_

 

 

 


End file.
